Steiner integrates Anglo-American art history with East Europe semiotics and art theory to clarify the theoretical issues that attend the study of inter-artistic relationships and 'illuminate a broad range of specific works, genres and movements. She discusses the work of Pieter Breughal, Henri Rousseau, Edward Gorey, M C Escher, Rene Magritte, Jackson Pollock, William Carlos Willliams, Gertrude Stein, Lewis Carroll and e e cummings. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

Steiner writes that her book "is an argument for the subjectivity of aesthetic response, an attempt to explain what it means to invest art with value and derive pleasure from it. It tries to demonstrate the utility of a liberal aesthetics in which art is...a virtual realm tied to the world by acts of interpretation." The author considers the controversial issues of censorship, political correctness, anti Semitism and academic scholarship. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.